Download the Exercise   | Download the Instructions We are fast approaching the end of year. If you’re leading a team like I am, you will be rushing to deliver important work before the end of the year and will most likely finish up with the Christmas party and team lunches where you will most likely …

Silo mentality causes inefficiency, information hoarding and game-playing in workplaces. Although hard to measure, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a business with an engrained culture of divisive silos can’t have an agile, customer-focused and innovative culture. Yet, these are the very values that businesses must adopt to thrive in this new age …

More than two out of five CEO’s now expect their next competitive threat to come from outside their industry. (CEO insights from the Global C-Suite study – IBM Institute of Business value). Business needs the creativity of their workforce to compete with these new competitors. 100% of successful businesses know how to unlock the creativity of …

It’s mid-September 1999. I’m sharing the dark-chocolate oak boardroom table with 8 Executives who’ve flown in from all over Australia and New Zealand to attend our monthly Executive Leadership meeting. We spend the first 20 minutes discussing the threat of the Millennium bug, otherwise known as Y2K. Believe it or not, once-upon-a-time software was programmed …

I was one of the millions of people left frustrated on Tuesday night after not being able to complete the Census, although it didn’t surprise me. I figured it would be up-and-running before long with the bugs ironed out and we would just do a ‘take-two’ on it. The people I’ve spoken to also found …

Your team mate (or team foe) is just not pulling his weight. He comes in late, bleary-eyed, looking like he’s played GTA all night and rarely delivers his commitments on time which means your work is often delayed.  When you finally get his piece of the project you work the extra hours to correct a …

The trend by technology-related businesses and internal technology departments to adopt the Agile framework has seen a surge in the engagement of leadership educators to up-skill their managers with a more facilitative style.  The top-down, traditional way of managing people is getting in the way of fully embracing this new way of doing business. The …

When I was in America earlier this year facilitating a Leadership Program, the manager of the training facility commented on how much laughter was resonating through the walls of the meeting room. She said that she’d never heard so much laughter during a leadership program, or indeed any program. It got me thinking about the …

After a decade of educating leaders and working with senior leaders and HR professionals to transform self-interested, egotistical (fear-driven) managers into Leaders who have the best interest of their people, teams and organisations at heart, I know a thing or two about the so-called ‘soft-skills’ of leadership. Many a time, I meet with HR professionals …

Last week I had an emotional reunion with my very first leader, David Costello (pictured right), whom I had the pleasure of working for as a young, green human resources manager more than 15 years ago, at North Sydney Leagues Club. I’d had managers before David but not leaders; David was my first and most …